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Page 30
PIONEER HARDSHIPS
CHAPTER VI
THE pioneer had a hard life. There was no worry about not having
plenty of work. His day began at dawn and closed with twilight, and
sometimes he had a few hours additional work.
The pioneer had a couplet, "A man's work is from sun to sun; a
woman's work is never done", and it very aptly described the life of
both.
No one advocated an eight-hour day, or five days a week. There was
no Union to tell him how many feet of mud and brick chimney he
should build in eight hours, or how many clapboards he should lay on
his cabin roof in a working day. His wife was equally busy, and did
not have bridge clubs to occupy the vacancy in her mind. If she had
no work of her own, she helped some neighbor and she was not
troubled with gossip, or scrapping about the possession of a cheap
prize for which she had wasted an afternoon at her club.
When the pioneer came into the forest he brought with him the few
simple tools necessary for the construction of his cabin, to clear
his land, and to plow his fields for planting his crops. Of course
he carried a rifle with which he furnished the meat for his table.
He was a "Jack of all Trades." He had no money with which to employ
carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, or tailors, and if he had had
money, there were no tradesmen in the community to be hired. He
started his fire by striking the flint of his gunlock on a steel,
conveying the spark to a piece of punk which he fanned into a flame
with his breath. He was careful to "keep his home fire burning," so
that the operations of lighting fires were few and far between. If
he happened to be away and the fire on the hearth went out, his
wife, or some one of the family, would be compelled to walk miles to
the nearest neighbor to "borrow fire." His mode of conveyance was a
rough sled constructed from the timbers of the forest. His principal
beast of burden was the ox. The ox was much more useful than the
horse. It could travel through the swamps and among logs where a
horse could not go. When the ox was worn out, he could be turned
into beef. It did not occur to the early settler to use horse meat.
In fact the horse was looked upon as "unclean", and only starvation
would have compelled the pioneer to eat horse beef. If he needed a
barrel, hogshead, or cask, he split his staves from white oak or
pine, fashioned them with his coopering tools, and hooped them with
small hickories split in two, to the end of which he fashioned a "hooplock".
He made his own shoes from the hides of his own cattle, or the wild
animals he killed. His shoe last was whittled from the white
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